Piracy and Intellectual Property in Latin America: Rethinking Creativity and the Common Good

237 Pages·2020·7.767 MB·English

by  Víctor Goldgel-Carballo, Juan Poblete (eds.)

PIRACY AND INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY IN LATIN AMERICA
Piracy and Intellectual Property in Latin America is the first sustained effort to present
an alternative framework for understanding piracy and contemporary challenges
to global discourses on intellectual property (IP) in the Americas.
While piracy might just look like theft and derivative reproduction from
the perspective of many right-holders, the contributors to this volume go
beyond this economic-driven logic and show how practices of copying are in
fact practices of reinvention that reflect the rich social networks and forms of
creativity, authorship, commerce, and consumption that characterize informal
economies. From a perspective informed by contemporary scenarios in
Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, and the United States,
they engage in a discussion of alternatives that—predicated on the importance
of protecting culture—allow for other ways of conceiving prosperity at local,
national, regional, and global levels. Examples discussed include video games,
clothing, trinkets, music, film, TV, and books.
Designed to help understand the broader implications of IP and piracy for the
field of Latin American studies, this book will be a major contribution to Global
South studies, as well as to the growing bibliography on globalization, informal
markets, and piracy.
Víctor Goldgel-Carballo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Span­
ish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Juan Poblete is Professor of Latin/o American Literature and Cultural Studies at
the University of California Santa Cruz.
“The essays in this collection expertly localize unauthorized use in Latin America,
integrating on-the-ground production with globalizing discourses of circulatory
legitimacy. The book should be required reading for those interested in the
increasingly important role of digital textuality in emerging economies.”
Alexander S. Dent, Associate Professor of Anthropology,
The George Washington University
PIRACY AND
INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY IN LATIN
AMERICA
Rethinking Creativity and the
Common Good
Edited by Víctor Goldgel-Carballo and
Juan Poblete
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Víctor Goldgel-Carballo and Juan Poblete to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-42401-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-42399-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-82395-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books
Víctor dedicates this book to all the people whose unpaid
labor makes books and sharing knowledge possible.
Juan dedicates this book to the memory of his beloved father-
in-law, Joe Mahay (1946–2019): a great bushwhacking Adir­
ondack environmental pioneer, and a better person.

CONTENTS

List of illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
List of contributors xii
Introduction 1
Juan Poblete and Víctor Goldgel-Carballo
1 How Trinkets Became Counterfeits: Value and Intellectual
Property in a Low-Income Market in Brazil 17
Rosana Pinheiro-Machado
2 The Piracy Problem: Indigeneity, Hybridity, and the Racial
Politics of IP Enforcement in Guatemala 37
Kedron Thomas
3 Piracy and/as Legitimate Business 56
Phillip Penix-Tadsen
4 Piracy as Media Practice: The Informal Market of Music and
Videos in Peru 70
Santiago Alfaro Rotondo
5 Context as Content in Chilean Community Media 90
Jennifer Ashley
viii Contents
6 “Feeling Pirate” as Media Affect in Mexican American
Experience 106
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez
7 From Piracy as a Crime to Piracy as a Necessity: Territorial
Inequalities and the Socially Necessary Market in Brazil 121
Fábio Tozi
8 Book Piracy in Chile and the Proletarianization of Literature
in Pedro Lemebel 140
Juan Poblete
9 Pirate Book Aesthetics in Contemporary Argentina 155
Víctor Goldgel-Carballo
10 Between Abundance and Appropriation: Indeterminate
Critiques of Global IP Schemes 172
Zac Zimmer
11 The Creative Copy: Agency and Fashion at a Market for
Counterfeited Garments 191
Matías Dewey
Appendix: A Primer on Intellectual Property. 207
Juan Poblete
Index 221
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
4.1 Peru: percentages of access to films according to mode of

access and geographical distribution, 2017 75

4.2 Peru: income from APDAYC revenues 2004–2012 84

6.1 Map of Houston demographics, and Sharpstown insert,

based on 2010 census data 107

6.2 DVD selections of Super Video Latino 108

6.3 MexVideo is a video stand outside a Fiesta supermarket 112

6.4 Inside Super Video Latino 114

7.1 Belém do Pará: production, distribution, and consumption

of Tecnobrega music 129

7.2 Belém do Pará: Nova Dimensão (New Dimension)

Aparelhagem (2010). From left to right: an aparelhagem (or

studio) set up in a home garage, followed by two internal

pictures that highlight the use of computers and home

printers to download and record music and to print covers

or advertising material. The tasks that require expertise and

bureaucratic division of labor in a label are here carried out

by the DJs (two brothers), who are also the owners of the

aparelhagem 130